Netanyahu’s gamble sets up Israel for messy election campaign

Author

PhD candidate in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews

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Yoav Galai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Binyamin Netanyahu’s third government was a fractious one from the start, with many coalition members and acting ministers publicly contradicting or denouncing his policies at every turn. Nevertheless, Netanyahu has now chosen to disperse his coalition himself by firing and then publicly attacking two ministers from two parties on his left, while remaining silent about similar challenges made from the two coalition members that are more or less aligned to his right.

That shows precisely what Netanyahu is trying to achieve by calling an election: to recalibrate and regain control over his core vote, while simultaneously chasing Israel’s rapidly radicalising public opinion to the right.

Campaign launch

In a speech that unofficially launched his campaign, Netanyahu argued that his current government was guided by three principles: preventing a nuclear Iran, demanding Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, and continuing construction in East Jerusalem. He then accused the fired ministers of deliberately thwarting these policies.

The public announcement also occasioned a rare chance for journalists to present the prime minister with questions, something Netanyahu has adamantly avoided throughout his premiership. The questions asked by several journalists concerned the dismissal of the ministers – “why now?” and “why them?” – but he was characteristically unforthcoming.

Netanyahu has tried to recast his quiet response to this rightist criticism as simply putting these ministers in their place – whereas Lapid and Livni were supposedly conspiring to oust him in an imminent “putsch” in alliance with the ultra-orthodox parties.

Problems at home

Netanyahu has framed his call for new elections as a way of avoiding having to rely on coalition partners such as Livni and Lapid and bolstering his own camp: “I ask you to vote for the ruling party under my leadership, the Likud, in order to give me a real mandate to lead the people and the country.”

On November 9, in a meeting of the Likud central committee, Netanyahu proposed to hold internal elections much earlier in order to secure his leadership position for the next general election. While he managed to pass this resolution and elections were set to January 6, Feiglin managed to call a vote on a motion that would limit the next term for only six months in case no new elections occur.

The vote over the motion was controversially judged inconclusive; a secret ballot was set up only to be cancelled by Likud’s legal adviser. Nevertheless, Feiglin and his supporters had powerfully asserted themselves.

The evening ended with something even closer to a putsch than Netanyahu’s prolonged altercation with his ministers: the organisers of the ballot pleaded with Feiglin to address the crowd and calm his supporters down before the prime minister arrived, perfectly demonstrating the fevered internal dynamics of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.

The world against Israel

Given the strong support to the right in general, evidenced both by latest polls and by a push to the right by factions in the Likud. Netanyahu’s attack on the leaders of the two parties to his left is a purely electoral move; in a sense, he is kicking centrists such as Livni and Lapid out to the wasteland of the left merely to propel himself further to the right.

Netanyahu’s Likud ally Gilad Erdan added the spin to Netanyahu’s kick when he claimed Lapid “sides with the world against Israel”, placing Netanyahu squarely in his comfort zone of belligerent foreign policy – defending Israel from Iran and fighting international pressure, even when voiced via his own appointed ministers.

Judging by Jordan’s bid to get the UN Security Council to command an end to the Israeli occupation by November 2016 and the wave of symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state by Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Spain and most recently, France, this pressure is only set to increase. But Netanyahu is well-poised to build an electoral strategy around these challenges.

He will be free from dealing with challenges within the Likud, and will most likely follow a politics that argues “now is no time for politics.” Expect him to to sideline other hopefuls and assert his position as an experienced, tough, capable leader.

There’s a long way to go till March 17 – but Netanyahu has laid the groundwork already.